Daniel Ellsberg speaks out about nuclear 'doomsday machine'

The current Hollywood movie "The Post," about the Washington Post's decision to publish the Pentagon Papers has made Daniel Ellsberg a household name again.

While he is best-known for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington Post, at that time he also copied a lot of nuclear weapons planning documents, but they were lost. Now declassified, Daniel Ellsberg has written a book based on these documents, called "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner."

Regarding President Trump's threat to North Korea that the nuclear option is "on the table," Ellsberg said, "no president has made a nuclear threat against a nuclear weapons state for 55 years," that being during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"It's crazy for either side to think of armed conflict with the other," he said, "but both sides are threatening crazy action and anyone who says there is no chance that will be carried out has not been following any of the events here." He added, "we are in a very serious situation."

Since the Eisenhower administration, Ellsberg said, the nuclear launch authority has been delegated and more than just the Commander-in-Chief have their fingers on the nuclear button. He said "there are many fingers on many buttons" and this is also true for other countries, including North Korea.

Regarding hopes for the future, Ellsberg said "you can't un-invent nuclear weapons, but you can dismantle doomsday machines. We should not have the ability to destroy life. It seems a modest goal, and yet an enormous change."

According to Ellsberg, "this system is not just wasteful, or unnecessary, or anachronistic, which it is ... it's insane and immoral."

Quoting Abraham Lincoln who said "if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong," Ellsberg concluded the interview by saying that if our nuclear weapons system is not wrong, "morality has no real meaning."

Ellsberg spoke December 12, 2017 at the Commonwealth Club of California with the Club's President and CEO Gloria Duffy, who was a high-level defense department official in the Clinton administration.